Interview with XDA Chef Laurentius26 – Pt. 1

For those new members on xda-developers, perhaps you don´t know about the work of XDA member Laurentius26. He has over 5 years of cooking experience for several devices. He started cooking for the Universal and worked together with XDA member Beasty. Their joint efforts were very important to pull Universal into Windows Mobile 6 and later 6.1. After that, some newer Chefs continued the work of Laurentius26, who had moved on to cook for the HD2.

Orb3000: Hi Laurentius26, thanks a lot for giving us this interview. First, I would like to ask you about the early times on XDA, when cooking was something that only few people were working at, when mobile world was much less crowded. How was your experience on those early years in XDA?

Laurentius26: Hi Orb, thanks to you for the interview, I feel honored.
It was great that time, my first device I cooked for and so many stuff to read about how ROM/kitchen Gods like Mamaich, Buzzdev, Bepe, Buzz Lightyear and many other great people that created the tools we still use today.
Indeed, XDA was less crowded but it also had a benefit as I feel we worked closer together that time, the atmosphere was great on the forum.
HTC was still pretty unknown and it felt like we were kind of patriots exploring the new Pocket PC world ha-ha 😉
I was busy with Windows Mobile 6 Pro Business for Universal trying to fix video call. That was the time when I met Beasty and together we were tweaking and flashing in trial and error to get the most out of the device.
Public was so enthusiastic and we had great fun releasing the ROM´s.

Orb3000: I remember we met on the Universal section a long time ago. Was this your first cooking device? Or there was another? Tell us a bit of your first steps into cooking please.

Laurentius26: Yeah Orb, it was the first device I started cooking for and I met XDA-Developers. I started reading about the cooking tools and kitchens by Mamaich and Bepe and many other great people, all interesting stuff and it’s nice if you can customize a device to your needs. You can take software/drivers from other phone/OS and make things happen that normally don’t exist on an out of the box stock device.

Orb3000: This is an specific one for all Universal members that have made this question several times; what happened with video calling work on newer ROM´s for Universal?, why is it that it never worked 100%?

Laurentius26: Universal original came with WM 5 OS and for the ported WM6, drivers for video call didn’t exist, at least not for Uni so we had to experiment with other device drivers to find a workaround. Unfortunately, there didn’t exist so many VGA devices that time, they were all QVGA so that was a problem.Beasty taught me how to play with visual kitchen and KITL, with KITL you can connect your device to your pc and when it boots you see every dll loading on your pc. We checked dll and exe dependencies and tried to hack into phone canvas and video call packages but, we couldn’t make it work.

Orb3000: We remember your great ROM´s with Beasty. You were a great team delivering solid and stable ROM´s. How did you start working with him?

Laurentius26: I met him on XDA. where else? ha-ha 😉
We exchanged MSN and both love cooking, until today we still have a very good friendship, it’s a pity he’s just too busy with his job but I still talk to him.

Orb3000: This question perhaps will sound a bit tacky. What made you stop cooking for the Universal?

Laurentius26: Well, it was a pretty huge and thick device and some nice new phones came on the market so I moved because I wanted to try a new phone with stock WM6. I moved to HTC Tytn II, a kind of compromise as Tytn II is only QVGA but smaller and sometimes you can’t have it all as manufactures don’t make it.

To find out the ROM Laurentius26 is cooking for the HTC HD2 (Leo), read here.

I hope you enjoyed this interview and expect the second part soon, please leave your comments!.

Join us in a fun Sunday Debate on Compromises. Come with your opinions and feel free to read some of our thoughts, then pick your side or play devil’s advocate to get your voice heard and engage in friendly discussion. You can read our food-for-thought or jump straight into the fray below! Getting an upgrade is a big deal to us power users: it’s our little Android Christmas, where after a long time (for plenty of us, at least)...

The Note 4 never had the fastest Recents Menu, and despite its 3GB of RAM, its app-holding capabilities only got worse on Lollipop. The infamous RAM bug that plagued the S6 is indeed an annoyance on the Note 4's 5.0.X ROMs. Rumors of an update to fix all of this were confirmed with the first reports of the 5.1.1 update for the Russian Note 4, which seemingly improved the Recents Menu and RAM management. But it'll be a long time...

Apps are at the front and center of any smartphone experience, and with over a million apps on the Google Play Store and new apps being submitted to our forums every day, staying up to date on the latest apps and games can be a hassle. At XDA we don’t discriminate apps - if it’s interesting, innovative, original or useful, we mention them. The XDA Portal Team loves apps too, and here are our top picks for this week. ...

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 (AT&T) [N900A]

OnePlus One (Unlocked)

HTC One M9 (Unlocked)

XDA Developers was founded by developers, for developers. It is now a valuable resource for people who want to make the most of their mobile devices, from customizing the look and feel to adding new functionality. Are you a developer?